James Harris

Designer and Front-End Developer

I tackle complex concepts and make them easy to understand.

Stories make use of recurring ideas called "tropes" which repeat across genres and through time. The community at TVTropes.org catalogues these tropes in an enormous wiki, collecting examples for every imaginable trope with light-hearted glee. I created the Periodic Table of Storytelling as an introduction to TVTropes; it's an infographic that organizes the basic building blocks of storytelling into a familiar format.

Part coding exercise, part writing project, I made this to help me codify some ethical principles I've been developing in my own life.

My Father's World has a sophisticated curriculum framework that saves parents lots of time and money, but requires some explanation up-front. It was believed that this explanation was best delivered in person at a convention; no-one had ever devised a truly effective written explanation.

I decided an interactive infographic stood a good chance of solving this thorny problem. After getting my boss' permission, I mocked up a prototype in Illustrator and then built it out using HTML5 <canvas> and Fabric.js. I showed the prototype to our knowledgeable customer service reps, made changes based on their feedback, and published the project to our website.

After publication, I used HotJar to collect feedback about the project; 97% of our visitors marked "This page helped me understand the Family Learning Cycle."